1889: 34 locals represented at the first Machinists convention, held in Georgia State Senate Chamber, elect Tom Talbot as Grand Master Machinist. A monthly journal is started.

1890: First Canadian local chartered at Stratford, Ont. Union is named International Association of Machinists. Headquarters set up in Richmond, VA. Membership at 4,000.

1891: IAM Local 145 asks $3 for a 10-hour day.

1892: First railroad agreement signed with Atcheson, Topeka & Santa Fe.

1895: IAM joins American Federation of Labor (AFL), moves headquarters to Chicago.

1898: IAM Local 52, Pittsburgh, conducts first successful strike for 9-hour day.

1899: Time-and-a-half for overtime has become prevalent. Headquarters moved to Washington, D.C.

1903: Specialists admitted to membership. Drive begins for 8-hour day.

1905: Apprentices admitted to membership. There are 769 locals. Railroad machinists earn 36 to 43 cents an hour for 9-hour day.

1908: Metal Trades Department established within AFL with IAM President James O''Connell as president.

1911: Women admitted to membership with equal rights.

1912: Railway Employees Department established in AFL with Machinist A. O. Wharton as President.

1914: Congress passes Clayton Act limiting use of injunctions in labor disputes and making picketing legal.

1915: IAM wins 8-hour in many shops and factories. IAM affiliates with International Metalworkers Federation.

1916: Auto mechanics admitted to membership.

1918: IAM membership reaches 331,000.

1920: Headquarters moved to first Machinists Building, at 9th & Mt.Vernon Pl., N.W., Washington, D.C. British Amalgamated Engineering Union cedes its North American locals to IAM.

1920: Machinists earn 72 to 90 cents an hour for 44-hour week.

1922: 79,000 railroad machinists pin shopmen's strike against second post-war wage cut. Membership declines to 148,000.

1924: IAM convention endorses Robert M. LaFollette, Sr., for President.

1926: Congress passes Railway Labor Act requiring carriers to bargain and forbidding discrimination against union members.

1927: IAM urges ratification of Child Labor Amendments to U.S. Constitution; 2,500,000 children under 16 are working at substandard wages.

1928: 250 delegates at 18th IAM convention urge 5-day week to alleviate unemployment.

1929: Depression layoffs cut IAM membership to 70,000.

1932: Congress passes Norris LaGuardia Act banning use of court injunctions in labor disputes.Wisconsin adopts first unemployment insurance act. Nearly 30% of union members are jobless.

1933: IAM backs National Recovery drive and 40-hour week. FOR picks IAM Vice President Robert Fechner to head new Civilian Conservative Corps. Membership sinks to 56,000.

1934: IAM establishes Research Department.

1935: Congress adopts National Labor Relations Act establishing right to organize and requiring employers to bargain in good faith. IAM opens drive to organize aircraft Industry.

1936: First industrial union agreement signed with Boeing, Seattle. IAM convention endorses FDR for President. Membership climbs to 130,000.

1937: Social Security and Railroad Retirement Acts now in operation. IAM negotiates paid vacations in 26% of its agreements.

1939: IAM signs first union agreement in air transport industry with Eastern.

1940: Machinists rates average 80 cents an hour. IAM pledges full support to National Defense program. IAM membership climbs to 188,000.

1941: IAM pledges hail support to win the war including no-strike pledge.

1944: 76,000 IAM members serve in armed forces. Total membership now 776,000.

1945: First agreement with Remington Rand. IAM convention votes to establish weekly newspaper, education department. Widespread layoffs follow end of World War II.

1946: 88% of IAM agreements now provide for paid vacations.

1947: Congress enacts anti-union Taft-Hartley Act. Machinists Non-Partisan Political League founded. IAM Legal Department established. Machinists average $1.56 an hour.

1948: IAM membership opened to all regardless of race or color.IAM convention endorses Harry Truman for President.

1949: Railroad machinists win 40 hour week. Membership down to 501,000.

1950: IAM joins International Transport Workers Federation. Machinists now average $1.82 an hour.

1951: IAM pledges full support of UN action in Korea.

1952: Employees on 85% of airlines now protected by IAM agreements. 92% of IAM contracts provide for paid holidays.

1953: IAM has contracts fixing wages and working conditions with 13,500 employers. IAM Atomic Energy Conference organized.

1955: AFL and Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) merge, Machinist Al Hayes elected Vice President and chairman of Ethical Practices Committee. 70% of IAM contracts now have health and welfare provisions. Machinists average $2.33 an hour.

1956: 2,000th active local chartered. New ten story Machinists Building dedicated at 1300 Connecticut Ave., Washington, DC.

1958: IAM convention establishes a strike fund which was approved by the membership in a referendum vote. IAM membership now tops 903,000.

1959: Congress enacts anti-union Landrum-Griffin Act.

1960: IAM convention endorses JFK for President after personal visits from both Kennedy and Richard Nixon. IAM convention establishes college scholarship program. IAM establishes Labor Management Pension Fund.

1962: IAM Electronics Conference established. JFK issues Executive Order giving Federal employees a limited right to collective bargaining. Machinists now average $3.10 an hour.

1964: IAM convention endorses LBJ for President, after a personal appearance. Delegates vote to change name to International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Membership at 800,000.

1966: IAM members strike five major airlines and finally break through unfair 3.2% limit on wage increases. First dental care plan negotiated with Aerojet General.

1967: Railroad machinists lead shopcrafts against nation's railroads. Congress forces return to work and arbitration.

1968: IAM membership tops 1,000,000. Machinists average S3.44 an hour.

1969: IAM member, Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin, the first space mechanic walks on the moon.

1970: Congress votes first Federal Occupational Safety and Health law. IAM is one of 19 unions in first successful coordinated bargaining effort against GE.

1971: IAM wins biggest back pay award in history, more than $54,500,00 for 1,000 members locked out illegally by National Airlines. IAM establishes Job Safety & Health Department.

1972: IAM membership drops to 902,000 as a result of recession and layoffs in defense industries. IAM President Floyd Smith quits U.S. Pay Board to protest unfair economic policies. IAM convention endorses Sen. George McGovern for President.

1973: IAM and UAW hold first joint Legislative Conference with 1,000 delegates in attendance. Machinists average $4.71 an hour. Membership rises to 927,000.

1974: Watergate scandal cast its shadow over labor unions along with the rest of the country. When President Nixon resigned, IAM wired President Gerald Ford, "You can count on our support and cooperation in your efforts to bring America back to the principles upon which it was founded."

1976: IAM convention endorses Jimmy Carter for U.S. President., Delegates vote to set up Civil Rights and Organizing departments and expand community services program.

1977: William W. Winpisinger sworn in as the lAM's 11th president.

1979: Citizen/Labor Energy Coalition launches first Stop Big Oil day to protest obscene profits by oil conglomerates while American workers'' paychecks continue to shrink.

1980: IAM media project begins. Thousands of IAM members and their families monitor prime time TV to determine media's portrayal of working people and unions.

1981: Older Workers and Retired Members Department is established at Grand Lodge.

1982: Reaganomics grips nation. Individual and corporate bankruptcies reach epidemic proportions. IAM membership begins drop to 820,211.

1983: IAM introduces ''Rebuilding America'' act to Congress as alternative to Reaganomics and to rebuild nation’s industrial base.

1984: IAM convention in Seattle WA, endorses Walter Mondale for U.S. President. Delegates vote funding for Placid Harbor Education Center to improve the level of understanding of workers in an ever changing world.

1987: IAM Executive Council establishes new Organizing Department, the first ever to be headed by a Vice President. First IAM Communications Conference convened in Kansas City, MO.

1988: IAM celebrates 100th anniversary in Atlanta, GA, on May 5.

1989: George J. Kourpias sworn in as the IAM's 12th president.

1992: IAM moves to new state-of-the-art headquarters building in Upper Marlboro, MD, to keep pace with technological changes and serve members'' needs well into 21st Century; IAM convenes 33rd convention at Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

1994: International Woodworkers of America ratify merger agreement. More than 20,000 members join IAM family. Some 8,000 USAir fleet service workers say "IAM yes." Machinist newspaper bids fond farewell, reborn as IAM Journal magazine.

1995: IAM, Auto and Steelworker unions debate plans for unification by year 2000. Unity plan sparks solidarity. Plan would create largest, most diverse union in North America, with more than 2,000,000 active members, 1, 400, 000 retirees. Sixty-nine day strike brings major victory in new contract at Boeing. Members air their views during first round of Town Hall meetings.

1996: ‘Fighting Machinists'' spearhead political battle for worker rights. Union efforts provide winning edge in Clinton-Gore presidential victory. Meeting in Chicago, IAM Convention delegates build bridge to 21st century. Delegates establish IAM Women's Department.

1997: On July 1, Robert Thomas Buffenbarger, 46, takes office as 13th International president in 109-year IAM history, moves quickly to reshape Union to reflect growing diversity, interests, concerns of IAM members. Former IAM President Winpisinger dies Dec. 11.

1998: New Blue Ribbon Commission empaneled to provide membership forum to voice opinions. Placid Harbor facility renamed Winpisinger Education and Technology Center to honor visionary union leader, who brought the facility into being.

1999: General Vice President William Scheri retires, Robert Roach, Jr. takes over the Transportation Department. IAM Shares mutual fund created; llows members to put money to work in a fund that invests in IAM-represented companies. The National Federation of Federal Employees affiliates with the IAM. Unification effort with the Steelworkers and UAW ends because of major philosophical differences; the three unions vow to work together, however.

2000: The IAM endorses Al Gore for President. The AFL-CIO launches its New Alliance campaign, Grand Lodge Convention delegates respond with mandate that all IAM local and district lodges affiliate with their state AFL-CIO labor councils.The IAM meets in San Francisco for the 35th Grand Lodge Convention. The delegates establish Communicator and Educator positions.

2001: IAM Communications revamped with relaunch of website, online streaming of video, and repositioning of the IAM Journal as an advocacy magazine. IAM Executive Council reelected. William W. Winpisinger Education & Technology Center increases capacity by 50%. IAM Dedicates memorial to fallen members. IAM members perish in September 11 attack. The IAM volunteers to help in war against terrorism and to help America rebuild.

2002: The IAM establishes the Automotive Department and sets in place dozens of organizing blitzes. LL 2710's Gary Blanke wins the IAM's first photography contest. Members speak out at the 2002 Blue Ribbon Commission town hall meetings. Everyday Heroes, an IAM documentary, which tells the story of the workers who risked their lives in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, goes on sale. The proceeds go to treat rescue and recovery workers at Ground Zero. The Transportation Department ignites a nationwide Day of Action to urge passengers back onto trains and airplanes. IAM members join with other U.S. union members for the biggest midterm election turnout ever.

2003: The IAM creates the Department of Employment Services to help members cope with the worst recession in years; Tony Chapman named its director. IAM leaders meet in Cincinnati, Ohio. IP Buffenbarger vows "No more business as usual." Presidential candidates Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt address the IAM leaders; Gephardt endorsed for president. GVP George Hooper passes away. Robert Martinez named Southern Territory GVP. ST Don Wharton Retires, Eastern Territory GVP Warren Mart succeeds Wharton. Lynn Tucker takes over as the Eastern GVP. James Brown takes over the Midwest Territory with the retirement of Alex Bay.

2004: The IAM Executive Council marches with thousands of trade unionists in Miami to protest Free Trade Area of the Americas. President George W, Bush's "Wall of Shame" tours Iowa during that state's presidential caucuses to bring job losses onto the national radar screen. CyberLodge, the innovative, open-source initiative to organize information technology workers opens for business. Former IAM President William W. Winpisinger is inducted into the International Labor Hall of Fame. The 36th Grand Lodge Convention convenes in Cincinnati and salutes North America's Might. Vice presidential candidate Senator John Edwards from North Carolina appears at a convention rally after a unanimous endorsement of Senator John Kerry and Senator Edwards by the delegates.

Thomas W. Talbot
1888 - 1890
First Grand Master Machinist Born on a farm in Chesterfield County, South Carolina on April 27, 1849, Talbot was left fatherless at six months and was working in a shoe factory to support his invalid mother by the time he was ten years old. When young Tom reached the age of sixteen, a few weeks after Lee's surrender at Appomattox, he entered an apprenticeship in the machine shop of the North Carolina Railroad in Florence, South Carolina. Many years later he said he chose this trade, "To make an honorable mechanic of myself, to be a worthy member of society and to . . . give me a good start in life."

John J. Creamer
1890 - 1892 
Second Grand Master Machinists
Talbot's successor, James J. Creamer of Richmond, Virginia, was born in 1861. At seventeen he began his apprenticeship in the machine shop of the Richmond Locomotive Machine Works. A member of the Knights of Labor, he served as secretary of the Richmond Assembly. However, when he heard of Talbot's Order of Machinists and Mechanical Engineers, he became a charter member and helped to organize Lodge 10. 

John O'Day
1892 - 1893
Third Grand Master Machinist 
When Creamer's successor, John O'Day of Indianapolis, took over as Grand Master Machinist in 1892 business and industry were in a deep economic downslide. This inflamed class-ridden relationships between employers and wage earners. Shortly after O'Day took office steelworkers in Homestead, Pennsylvania fought one of the bloodiest pitched battles in American labor history. This classic collision between capital and labor occurred on the banks of the Monongahela River, just outside of Pittsburgh.

James O'Connell
1893 - 1911
Fourth Grand Master Machinist
Born in Minersville, Pennsylvania, in 1858, he entered his apprenticeship in Oil City, Pennsylvania, in 1874 and worked in machine shops there for the next six years. He moved on to Detroit for short time, but returned to Western Pennsylvania to enter the newly booming oil business. Later he went to New York where he joined the Knights of Labor and served as a delegate at its 1886 Convention in Richmond. . . .As a member of the Executive Board O'Connell and Creamer became friends and allies. He usually stayed at Creamer's home when in Richmond on union business. When elected Grand Master Machinist he was thirty-five years old. . . .An observer at the 1908 AFL convention who wrote a series of thumbnail sketches of leading labor figures of the day indicated that O'Connell's leadership was based on ability, not personality. In fact he described O'Connell as a "veritable iceberg," too cold-blooded and deliberate to be a "true Irishman."

William H. Johnston
1911 - 1926
Fifth International President
William Hugh Johnston, the new International President, was born into a trade union family in Nova Scotia in 1874. His father was an early leader of the Shipwrights and Spar Makers, the union of craftsmen who built the elegant Yankee Clippers. In 1888, at the age of 14, Johnston became an apprentice in the machine shops of the Rhode Island Locomotive Works. . . .In 1895 he helped organize and became a charter member of an IAM lodge in Pawtucket. Following the Panic of 1897 he returned to the Rhode Island Locomotive Works in Providence, transferred his membership to Lodge 147 and soon became president and chairman of the shop committee. On several occasions the company invited him to drop his union activities by offering to promote him to general foreman. He not only stayed with the union, but went over to Brown and Sharpe to try to organize that violently anti-union company from within. . . .Later, as a district business representative, he negotiated a fifty-four hour week along with wage increases for most of his members. Johnston was thirty-seven when he took office as International President. He was bald, short, stocky and powerfully built. Though somewhat forbidding in appearance, he was described by those who knew him as good natured and amiable. Johnston was well read, commanding the attention of audiences through his logic and knowledge rather than the more florid flights of oratorical rhetoric more common to that time.

Arthur O. Wharton
1926 -1939
Sixth International President
Wharton had made his reputation not only in the IAM, but throughout the labor movement for his part in the 1911 strike against the Illinois Central and Harriman Lines. As the IAM's representative to this early stab at coordinated bargaining, he became everybody's choice to head the six shop crafts negotiating team--the so-called Federation of Federations. Later, when these six organizations created a formal Railway Employee's Department in the AFL, they elected Wharton as first president. When he agreed to be drafted to lead his own union, he took a substantial cut in salary--from $10,000 to $7,500 a year. He did so to halt the dissension which, as he said, "was wrecking the organization to a degree no outside agency had been able to accomplish." Wharton was born in 1873 into a mixed Anglo-Indian homesteading family on a remote and windswept plain in Kansas. While still a young boy his mother was widowed when his father got lost in a blizzard and froze to death. At fourteen he began a machinist apprenticeship on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. Upon becoming a journeyman in 1890 Wharton joined the IAM and went to work for the Union Pacific soon after. There he helped organize several lodges and was a leader of a strike against that road in 1893. Over the next several years he remained active in union affairs and was elected to a number of local and district lodge offices.

Harvey W. Brown
1939 - 1949
Seventh International President
Wharton's successor, Harvey Brown, had served as Resident GVP at Grand Lodge for a number of years. This position had become (and remains even today) the IP's chief of staff. It was no surprise, then, that the Executive Council chose Brown as acting International President. This choice was confirmed a few months later by a margin of almost four to one in a vote of the membership. . . .After completing his apprenticeship at Bethlehem Steel he boomed around the country, belonging to no fewer than fourteen different lodges in five years. In 1910, at the age of twenty-six, Brown was elected business representative by members of a lodge in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. A year later he was a delegate and chairman of the Officers' Report Committee at the 1911 Grand Lodge Convention in Davenport. . . .For the next few years he held various union positions including president of the Essex County Trades Council and IAM delegate to AFL Conventions. He was elected GVP in 1921 and Wharton brought him to headquarters as resident GVP in 1934.

Albert J. Hayes
1949 - 1965
Eighth International President
Born on Valentine's Day, 1900, to immigrant German parents in Milwaukee, Hayes was the seventh in a family of ten children. Like so many first generation children in those days, Al Hayes grew up speaking two languages. He was an exceptionally bright student and highly competitive third baseman who remained a fierce competitor throughout life. Hayes apparently hoped to be the first of his family to graduate from college. But this hope ended abruptly when his father was permanently and totally crippled by a freak accident in the coal yard where he worked as a foreman. . . .with his help desperately needed at home he was forced to go to work. Settling on a machinist apprenticeship as his best choice for a lifetime career he got a job with the West Milwaukee shops of the Milwaukee Railroad. 

P.O. Siemiller
1965 -1969
Ninth International President
Christened Paul LeRoy, Siemiller was born in September 1904 on a homestead close by the Platte River in central Nebraska. His father was a Civil War veteran who served at various times with the  4th Iowa Infantry and the 51st Missouri cavalry. While Roy was still a boy his father left the farm to an older brother and began an odyssey that took the family westward and eastward before finally settling down in Arkansas. Striking out on his own in the old time "strike and succeed" tradition of a Horatio Alger hero, young Roy left school at an early age to become a Western Union messenger. Spotting an "Apprentice Wanted" sign in the window of a machine shop where he was about to make a delivery, he removed his Western Union cap, went inside, fibbed about his age and talked himself into working nine hours a day at 11¢ an hour (with, as he later said, "no deducts"). 

Floyd E. "Red" Smith
1969 -1977
Tenth International President
The old time craftsmen who intended the IAM to be an exclusive and selective fraternity of highly skilled journeymen machinists probably spun in their graves when Floyd Emery "Red" Smith was sworn in as the IAM's tenth International President. Not only was Red Smith not a journeyman, he was not even a machinist.  Born to a family of itinerant farm workers in a long-gone crossroads village in Kansas in 1912, Red Smith's first and apparently only brush with trade came in 1929 when he went to work for 25¢ an hour as a machinist helper in a small shop in St. Louis after dropping out of high school at the age of seventeen. . . .In later years, Smith recalled that in travels to remote corners of Nevada he got to know IAM members in every part of the state and gradually began to serve as a sort of informal unpaid business representative for the Machinists Union in Nevada.

William W. "Wimpy" Winpisinger
1977-1989
Eleventh International President
Born the son of a union printer in Cleveland in 1924, Bill Winpisinger got on the fast track early in life. As a burly teenager he was a ferocious competitor, playing both ways on the line in high school football and good enough at basketball to get a tryout as a catcher with the Yankee farm club. Possessing a keen and questing intelligence he was to much the rebel, too rambunctious and impatient for the faculty at Cleveland's West Tech High School. Helped by a little push from the authorities, he dropped out of the 11th grade a month after Pearl Harbor. With the world at war and itching for more action than a class room could offer, he went to work in a local machine tool factory. In later years he recalled that this first brush with factory life, though brief, was enough to teach him the evils of company unionism. In August 1942, four months before his 18th birthday, he enlisted in the Navy. Over the next three years he served in the Mediterranean, North Africa, England and was at the beaches of Normandy on D-Day. He was on his way to the Pacific when Japan surrendered. Though he credits the navy with teaching him his trade as a diesel mechanic, he says it also taught him to distrust the abuse and ignorance of autocratic authority.

George J. Kourpias
1989 - 1997
Twelfth International President
George J. Kourpias was born in Sioux City, Iowa on June 10, 1932. Throughout his life, he has been devoted to the highest goals of the trade union movement, and he has been a committed leader and an eloquent advocate for the cause of dignity, justice and democracy for working people and their families everywhere. Brother Kourpias has been a leader in his union since first going to work as a young machinist in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1952, where be brought to his job the high trade union ideals and principles instilled by his family. He served his local as union steward, financial secretary, trustee and recording secretary. Elected president of the Woodbury (IA) County Labor Council. Elected president of the Iowa State Council of Machinists. Elected vice president of Iowa State Federation of Labor. Elected president of IAM District 162 in 1956. Appointed Grand Lodge Representative in 1964 -- duties included interpretation of the IAM Constitution, IAM Older Workers and Retired Members program, served as board member of the national Council of Senior Citizens. Elected General Vice President  1983 -- IAM Headquarters Resident Vice President. Elected IAM President 1989. Elected to AFL-CIO Executive Council, 1990; served on economic policy committee; public relations committee; older workers committee. Appointed in 1990, by U.S. Dept. of Labor, to serve on its National Advisory Commission of Work-Based Learning. Vice President, National Council of Senior Citizens. Member, Democratic National Committee. Chairman, Aerospace Conference of the International Metalworkers Federation. Member, Advisory Council on Social Security. Appointed in 1993, by President Clinton, to serve as a member of Overseas private Investment Corporation (OPIC). First ever union official to serve on that board. Re-elected, IAM President, 1993. Retired, 1997-NOT Brother Kourpias is now the President of the Alliance for Retired Americans. 

R. Thomas Buffenbarger
1997 - Present
Thirteenth International President
R. Thomas Buffenbarger is the 13th International President in the 112-year history of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM). First elected in 1997, Tom Buffenbarger leads 730,000 active and retired IAM members in Canada and the United States. As one of the largest industrial unions in North America, the IAM represents the men and women who build, repair and operate the machines that maintain the peace and sustain the prosperity both nations now enjoy. IAM members are building America's F-22 fighters at Boeing and Lockheed Martin, Aegis destroyers at Bath Iron Works and Bradley fighting vehicles at FMC Corp. hey are servicing United and US Airways planes, Union Pacific and Amtrak trains, UPS trucks and GM cars. In the last five years, the IAM has negotiated collective bargaining agreements with over 4,000 employers. Under Tom Buffenbarger's leadership, the IAM continues to diversify. It now represents doctors and limousine drivers in New York City, care givers in VA hospitals, loggers in Oregon, and cigarette makers in Virginia. The IAM is currently organizing Boeing engineers and United Mileage Plus employees. As its International President, Tom Buffenbarger serves on five major IAM sponsored organizations. He closely tracks the performance of the IAM National Pension Fund and the National IAM Benefit Trust Fund. He serves on the board of directors of Guide Dogs of America and IAM Cares. And Mr. Buffenbarger helps lead the Machinists Non-Partisan League, the twelfth largest political action committee in the nation. Tom Buffenbarger is a member of the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO. In that capacity, he chairs the federations' Committee on State and Local Central Bodies. He was instrumental in launching the New Alliance, a program designed to increase the AFL-CIO's impact at the grassroots level. His duties as international president span the globe. Tom Buffenbarger is a member of the Canadian Labor Congress. he serves on the Executive Committee of the International Metalworkers Federation that represents 20 million workers in over 100 countries and as President of its Aerospace Department. Mr. Buffenbarger also is a member of the US Treasury Department's Advisory Committee to the International Monetary Fund. President Buffenbarger, a journeyman tool and die maker at GE's jet engine plant in Evandale, Ohio, has been a machinist for nearly thirty years. He was the youngest International President in IAM history when he took the helm of the union at age 46. Mr. Buffenbarger is a graduate of Ohio University. He and his wife Linda have two children, Amy and Andrew. They live in Brookeville, Maryland